COMMENT Malaysia appears to be lagging behind in a number of key areas.

In particular, the Internet connection is one area that affects nearly every Malaysian who, at one point or another, would have complained about the slow connection in their area.

Despite huge amount of money pumped into the infrastructure and Malaysia boasting of its Cyberjaya fame, the country’s Internet connection is, in fact, among the top 10 slowest in the world.

According to a survey carried out by techbiggy.com , Malaysia ranks amongst the top 10 countries with the slowest Internet connection in the world. The others are Libya, Nepal, Nigeria, Iran, India, Bolivia, Syria, Indonesia and Kazakhastan.

When I read it, I cannot help but suggest that Communication and Multimedia Minister Ahmad Shabery Cheek take a few steps back and visualise how people perceive our country, since this is one area under his care.

The minister has to stop getting into a self-denial mode and for once, forget about people being “politically motivated”.  Instead, the minister should realise what people think of his ministry and ask why people have become disenchanted with the ruling coalition.

A simple exercise

Place yourself as a foreigner looking at the list of countries provided by techbiggy and match it with your own experience with our Internet services.

Now, I am sure your impression of Malaysia would not be very rosy. Just look at the list of countries again and what image appear on your mind the moment you read out the name of each country.

One can understand why war-torn or previously war-town nations like Syria, Iran and Libya suffer from lack of good Internet connections, or landlocked Nepal where the Internet is still at its infancy stage, but Malaysia is supposed to be a developed nation by 2020, which is just five years from now!

It is no wonder that after years of promoting Cyberjaya and the Multimedia Super Corridor, we are still lagging behind countries which make the top 10 countries with the fastest Internet connection, namely, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Latvia, Romania, Belgium, Switzerland, Bulgaria, Israel and Singapore.

Forget about Israel. If I mentioned it, some politicians would immediately jump up and allege that the techbiggy report was “sponsored by the Zionist regime” to shame Malaysia, but just look at the country just across the causeway. Go no further than Singapore!

When Singapore left Malaysia, it was a ‘tiny dot’ on the world map. Within the next 50 years, Singapore has risen to become one of the top trade centres in the world.

Although we have always wished that Kuala Lumpur would become the regional hub for international organisatons, we can now see why multinational companies like to set up their headquarters in Singapore. The Internet connection, crucial to the business world, is one of the 10 top fastest in the world!

Why is it that Singapore could achieve high-speed connectivity, while Malaysian Internet service continues to lag behind? This is a question which the minister should be asked during the next parliamentary session.

Unless we are saying that cabinet ministers these days who are appointed to the various ministries are simply clueless of what they should do to solve major issues plaguing their ministries, it is time for Ahmad Shabery and the ministry under him to sit upright.

Personal experiences aplenty

I have too many personal experiences to relate as a subscriber to various Internet providers. From Jaring dial-up and Streamyx to P1, Celcom, Maxis, U-Mobile and now ABNXcess, I cannot vouch any of these providers have excelled in their services.

There are too many licences but the standard of service provided has left many of us, as subscribers, screaming and shouting at both ministry and service providers.

Because of poor Internet connectivity, I had to switch from one service provider to another. Within two weeks of signing up for P1, I had to return the modem to the company because there was simply no connection in my neighbourhood.

Celcom was supposed to be one of the largest telcos, but I decided after one year of poor connectivity, to return the dongle. The same happened with Maxis. I ditched Unifi, because a neighbour had lots of complaints about the connectivity. I am currently on ABNXcess, which was supposed to be on a  5MBps bandwidth.

For the first few months, the connectivity was great (and I had proudly recommended it to a close associate of mind) but what drives me on to write this article is because of over one month of unpleasant experiences and continuous follow-up with the company and the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC).

Even when the email was copied to the minister, Ahmad Shabery Cheek, the response was found wanting. This, of course, does not reflect well on the ministry which is tasked to bring Malaysia to the next level.

To cut the story short, until the point of writing, the Internet connection has finally been restored after it was first reported ‘down’ last Friday - after more than 100 hours!

Past midnight or rather early this morning, the Internet connection was back to normal after a new set of fibre optic cable (old was snipped off by tree trimming contractors) was laid and splicing was completed.

This is, in fact, the second time that the Internet connection was disrupted within less than one month. Just one week ago the connection was restored, only to be down again.

To be fair to ABNXcess, unlike the bigger boys, complaints were courteously and well-attended to by the senior members of the organisation after I went through a tedious process of lodging a complaint with its customer care service. Even the chief executive officer personally responded to an email past midnight on March 3 - to which I give the thumbs-up!

Even his customer service chief Whatsapped me at 11pm last night to update me of the latest development on site.

However, something appeared to be amiss - while the senior management staff were serious about their turnaround time, on the ground, repair work kept being postponed from Friday to Saturday, and from Saturday to Monday, and on Monday night, I had to wait and see whether it would be restored by Tuesday!

Four days without proper Internet connection in modern living was like eternity without water or electricity and every hour of waiting was simply dreadful. I pray that I need not have to go through the same ordeal a third time, but hopefully should it even happen again,

the turnaround time would be much faster - not for me alone but for all its clients!

I have to admit that what impressed me the most is that it was the CEO of the company who took the trouble to write an email at 12.15am to explain “that tree trimming works that were done near your area had caused our cables to be damaged. The problem was isolated only today and the rectification works will be completed tomorrow. We are unable to complete the work today as TNB does not allow us to work at night for safety reasons.”

Explanation accepted, but the time taken for troubleshooting could have been shortened if the technicians had been more focused and went the extra mile to draw out an Ishikawa diagram, instead of leaving the complaint to be attended by another team the next day, weekends included.

Because of this, I have to admit that within the last one week, I had very negative experience of the service that would make it hard for me to recommend it to friends and now, I cannot give the thumbs-up to both the minister and his ministry, unless there is first a change in attitude.

Maybe, for ABNXcess, I may still give my recommendation to try out their service, since it is much better than the bigger boys, but for a new start-up, they have to improve their customer service  team on the ground. I cannot accept a customer care service staffer telling me that she does not have the phone number to the ABNXcess corporate office.    

On the whole, can we see improvement in our overall Internet service? We certainly cannot afford to adopt the attitude of ‘can’t care less’ that Malaysians are famous for, can we? The change has to begin from the top, and the minister should start revisiting his key performance index (KPI).

It would have made a difference if the communications minister had at least responded, and said he has assigned one of his officers to look into the complaint. If Ahmad Shabery chose not to respond to emails, he should not have provided the email address in his

ministry website. If he did not have the time to respond to emails, at least, he should have assigned an officer to do it on his behalf.

This, after all, is common courtesy and what any people-centric and service-oriented government should do - communicate that they are looking into the complaint. A minister is, after all, the people’s servant. No?

STEPHEN NG is an ordinary citizen with an avid interest in following political developments in the country since 2008.